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| Schalke's Klaas-Jan Huntelaar celebrates after scoring the first goal. |
Schalke have not been up to pace so far this season, as they laid adrift in the bottom half of the table with 8 points from 7 matches prior from this victory.
There were plenty of encouraging signs from the match for Schalke fans. Firstly, the passing was sharp, and players like Kevin Prince-Boateng and Choupo-Mouting looked very good as well. Captain Benedikt Howedes looked solid as per, while Uchida contributed well in attack once again. The fast Japanese full back also looked good defensively.
What Schalke need to improve on is creating chances for their talisman Klaas-Jan Huntelaar. Huntelaar was starved of chances in the first half, with his team mates only being able to create 2 real chances for him to score. The first came quite early in to the match, when there was excellent link up play between Kevin Prince-Boateng and Uchida, who delivered a fantastic cross along the face of the goal, only for Huntelaar to put it wide from 7 yards out. The second chance was extremely well taken by Huntelaar, with Draxler chipping the ball into the box and Huntelaar heading it straight into the top corner. Draxler got the icing on the cake 68 minutes into the match, scoring the second goal via a deflection.
Overall, it was an important victory for Schalke, especially as it now takes them into the top half of the table with 11 points from 8 games, and also because their arch rivals Borussia Dortmund fell to a third straight defeat by the hands of newly promoted side FC Koln. The Di Matteo era has gotten of to a positive start, and hopefully continues to get better when key players like Max Meyer, Jefferson Farfan, Sidney Sam and Jan Kirchoff are all fully fit again.
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